1. Ivy
I’d known Lex my entire life. At only six months age difference between us, we’d come out of the womb with each other’s names already etched into our souls. There was no succinct memory I could point to and say, “This…This was when I met Lex Fairfax.” But there were moments that stuck out, times when I could tell fate had tethered us, even as children.
Like a true Washington, my father, George, had been president for eight years, serving two terms before my mother had taken over the mantle, becoming one of the first Washington women to claim the title. Lex’s father, Kellan Fairfax, had been vice president both times, and some of my earliest memories were of me and Lex wrestling backstage at political events.
In those days, I only had eyes for his older brother, Marcus. He was two years our senior and thus more refined and worldly, as much as a child could consider someone else refined or worldly. I’d always been a type-A know-it-all with a huge fondness for lists and ten-year plans. Marcus starred in every single one, and when I imagined what my wedding would look like, he was the one standing at the end of that long aisle.
Most importantly, he made me feel safe when we had to be on stage. I had hated the media attention and all the eyes on me. They’d flash my face across magazines and television programs, and I’d have to smile and pretend like it was totally normal for children to be as famous as we were.
That’s the price we pay for being Washingtons, my mother would have said.
Then I don’t want to be a Washington, I would have told her. I’d meant it.
Lex had taunted me about it backstage during their first inauguration, cutting down to the bone as he always did, like he was born pre-wired to trip my triggers.
“If you’re scared, just say you’re scared.” Even at ten years old, he had incinerating hazel eyes and the beginnings of cheekbones that could cut glass.
“I’m not scared,” I’d told him. I just hated people looking at me and the cameras taking pictures. They’d put my face on a magazine cover and say something horrible about my haircut or clothes. The paparazzi were ruthless, even to children, but especially to my family. They lived to tell stories about us, and I had hated that, too.
But at that moment, I’d hated Lex most of all.
“Yes, you are.” He narrowed his hazel gaze at me. “You’re lying right now. You know how I know?”
My heart raced, and I tightened my hands into fists while I tried to keep myself from launching at him and clawing his eyes out.
“There’s a bright red X on your neck.” He came closer and poked at the side of my throat, his finger icy cold on my overheated skin. “X marks the lie.”
It wasn’t a scar or a mark or anything like that. Just the way my pale skin flushed when I got nervous, a rosy-pink pattern forming in the shape of an X right over my pulse. It had been there as long as I’d been alive.
I had glared at him, wishing his head would explode. This was not the first time he had challenged me, and even so young, I’d never back down from him.
Yes, I was a girl, but I could kick his butt, and he knew it.
“Shut up!”
“Don’t tell me what to do, X.” He’d taunted me with the nickname.
“Stop calling me X.” I had raised my voice and disturbed my baby sister Abigail, who started crying from the commotion.
“Stop being a ridiculous baby, X,” he’d teased. “X marks the lie! X marks the lie! X the Liar!”
It had set me off, and I threw myself at him, aiming for his throat as I snarled. Lex twisted one hand in my hair and smacked at my face with the other. I shoved my thumb in his eye as we grappled until our parents broke us up. Half the time, we were just releasing pent up tension, but even I could admit, there was a healthy respect mixed in with our aggravated competition. Even then, I knew he was the only person who could match me, wits for wits, temper for temper.
Such was our life for the entirety of our parents’ term, and by the time we were juniors in private school, our parents had won another election together, and I’d fallen in love with Lex’s brother. It was innocent teenage adoration. Marcus and I texted all day, talking until the sun came up and falling asleep listening to each other breathe. When we woke the next morning, the call still connected, we’d laugh at how badly our parents were going to kill us when they got the phone bill. He and I had a lot in common. We understood what it meant to wear the burden of history on our shoulders. As the eldest children, we had a “responsibility to uphold the family image.”
We longed for a normal life, whatever that meant. One away from the flashing paparazzi cameras, the headlines, and the politics. Away from the fake smiles and niceties. Maybe in a log cabin up north where no one would ever find us, where we could stare at the northern lights every night.
Just once, I’d like to show up at Mount Oberon’s Academy, the fancy boarding school where our parents sent us, and not worry about what someone would tell reporters that year. I’d stopped having roommates two terms ago because the girl I lived with sold pictures of me to The Puck, a well-known gossip magazine obsessed with my family. She’d made enough money to move her parents to an impressive villa in Tuscany after my mother threatened to have them thrown in Gitmo.
I’d thought she was my friend. I’d thought we’d be roommates until we graduated. Now, I kept to myself. My brother, Jon, was only a grade behind me and my sister, Kit, only two. She would be in my building this year, which made it easier to blend in with my siblings around. And Lex? Well, things would always be the same. He hated me, I loathed him, and in that mutual disdain, we had a healthy competitiveness that drove us both to the top of the class. (Much to my chagrin that I had to share yet another thing with him.)
Two months into our junior term, the secret service showed up unannounced in the middle of debate club to escort Lex, my siblings, and me back to the White House. My knees locked into place and dread soured my stomach as I registered the stoic expressions of our bodyguards.
“Agent K, what’s this about?” I asked.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the matter. There’s not much time. We need to move.” He didn’t meet my gaze as he stuffed me inside the SUV and shut the door.
“What’s going on?” Kit asked from the third row. Jon lifted his gaze, too. Of the five Washington children, the three of us were born back-to-back. The younger ones, Henry and Abigail, had come much later, my parents’ last ditch effort to save their drowning marriage. Regardless of age, I was the eldest and they looked to me for direction.
I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“It’s probably nothing.” Lex waved it off and lit a cigarette, cracking open the back window to tap the ash out.
“Why would they come get us in the middle of the afternoon if it was nothing?” I narrowed my eyes.
“I don’t know, X. Maybe someone fired a missile at Uranus”—he pronounced it your-anus—“and finally destroyed that giant stick that’s been living there your whole life.”
“Shut up, Lucifer.” I gave him a dirty look and crossed my arms over my chest. Jerk.
After that, we sat silent in the Range Rover on the hour drive back to DC while my thoughts ran wild.
All the president’s children, and all the president’s men…Where’s Humpty Dumpty?
I didn’t have any missed calls from my mother or her assistants, which should have eased my anxiety but only made it worse. This situation was more important than contacting the children, and that said something.
This is bad.
An hour later, we parked outside of the White House residence, and the arrangement of the cars in the parking area unnerved me. Both of my parents were here, which was not unusual. It was our house. But both of Lex’s parents were also here, and there were a few other cars I didn’t recognize.
“Agent K, please,” I tried when he opened the door to help us out. “What am I walking into?” I didn’t like not knowing but having to do it anyway; the anxiety suffocated me.
He opened his mouth, perhaps planning to tell the truth, but instead he took a deep breath and thought better of it. “I’m sorry, Ivy.”
He touched my shoulder to guide me toward the entrance. The humid August air stuck in my throat as I followed, almost like fate was giving me its own warning, coalescing in my gut like cement and growing heavier with each step I took.
I stopped when I set eyes on Lex’s mother, Anna, seated on the couch in the parlor and sank into herself with a tissue pressed to her face, her cheeks red, her blond hair falling out of her chignon as she sobbed in my mother’s arms.
Mother immediately looked at me, her steel-gray eyes red-rimmed with tears. The alarms in my heart blared. It was the first time I’d ever seen her cry.
My father stood in a dark corner, holding a whiskey tumbler in one hand and his forehead in the other. Vice President Kellan Fairfax sat stricken on an end chair, his salt-and-pepper hair in disarray, his dark eyes pale and motionless. He didn’t even look up when we arrived.
Lex stiffened next to me. Kit and Jon froze.
“What’s happened?” I found the courage to ask.
Somehow, I already knew. All this family here, the Washingtons, the Fairfaxes. The only one missing was?—
“Where’s Marcus?” Lex’s voice cracked, but he took a deep breath and cleared his throat to try again. “Where is he?”
“Oh, malysh,” Anna said, her cheeks tear streaked as she shook her head. “Marcus is dead. He’s dead! He’s dead!” She wailed and fell into the arms of my mother, who rocked her, cooing and whispering something too low to understand.
I didn’t hear much after that. The buzzing sound of shock between my ears made it impossible to understand words. Kellan mentioned a boating accident, and my father said they were flying his remains back on a chopper, but they could have been the parents from Charlie Brown, mutated into unintelligible noise.
Marcus is dead. He’s dead.
Then, as soon as the thought crossed my mind, another more despicable voice followed with—At least, it’s not Lex.
I could exist in a world without Marcus. We’d lived apart for a lot of our lives due to the age difference between us. But Lex? I didn’t know who I was if there was no Lex. I didn’t know how to be if he wasn’t also a part of this world. I blinked, shocked with myself.
What? Where the hell did that come from?
I swallowed down the thought, determined not to let it take up any more space in my mind.
Marcus is dead. He’s dead.
“Ivette,” my mother said, bringing me back to the present. “Take the children upstairs to your room.”
Silently, stoically, I grabbed my sister’s hand and led her to her room. Jon went to his, but I…well, I just couldn’t be alone. Lex turned the handle on my door, walked inside, and sat down on my bed. Wordlessly, I followed. What could I say to him? What could he say to me? We’d just lost a huge part of who we were, and I couldn’t feel anything…nothing except relief that it wasn’t him.
And what the fuck did that say about me?
Marcus is dead. He’s dead.
I went to sit next to him, our bodies connected from shoulder to elbow and hip to knee. We’d spent ages hating each other, but in that small intimate connection, the history of the universe existed between us. Like we’d been born in stardust together and traveled through space and time to arrive here on Earth in these bodies. It was nothing sexual, only companionship in this loss we both endured. I’d always called him my enemy, and tomorrow, we’d go back to our regularly scheduled programming. But that night, we needed each other.
That’s when it hit me, alone in that room with Lex.
Marcus. Is. Dead.
He’s gone.
He’s never coming back.
The last time I talked to him? That was it. That’s all I’d get. The last time I saw him? That was the last time I’d ever see him. Period.
My chest tightened, and I grabbed Lex’s hand, intertwining my fingers in his so tightly that his nails dug into my skin.
“He’s dead,” I blubbered, tears spilling over my cheeks and sobs racking the back of my throat.
Lex opened his mouth, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t have anything to say. He put an arm over my shoulders, pulling me in to his torso and pressing a kiss to my temple. Wails poured out of me, the utter despair of this lance in my heart ripping me in two. I wept into the tentative truce between us while Lex silently sat there, holding me through it.